Tag: polytheism

Ways the Gods Can Contact You

death-witch-envy:

This is one of the most frequent questions I receive. Otherwise, I would not make this post. Worship is incredibly personal, and Gods usually contact you in ways that you don’t expect, or ways you didn’t realize until you look back on the past.

These methods listed are common ones that I often hear from others. Do not limit your communication to these steps.

  1. You feel a very close connection with Them, even without legitimate reason. Some people feel a connection to Their area of rule (i.e. sea god for feeling close to the ocean). If you’re like me, you’ve felt drawn to a God and you don’t even know why. This could be the Gods trying to reach out to you.
  2. A God sends you strong gut feelings. Before I devoteed to Hades, I gave Him offerings during every Sabbat. I can’t tell you why; I just felt like I needed to. One day, I thought of making an altar for Hades, and I immediately put aside all other thoughts and responsibilities, determined to create that altar. If you’ve experience similar gut feelings, that may be a God speaking to you.
  3. Your favorites overlap. It sounds silly, but it’s an experience I’ve heard about from a lot of people. For example, if you’ve always felt connected to dogs, and feel drawn towards Aries, you might look up the correspondence of dogs and realize that Aries has a close relationship with dogs. A quick disclaimer: This doesn’t always happen, and it’s possible to feel attracted to a God you have little connectivity with.
  4. Your environment responds to you when you speak with the Gods. During my first ever Wiccan ritual, the God spoke to me by raising the candle flame higher than any I’ve ever seen. I’ve felt the wind shift when I spoke to the Gods about change in my life. Changes like these could be signs of response, especially during a prayer or ritual.
  5. You feel a response, similar to the last one, but more esoteric. Examples may include feeling a warm blanket on your shoulders, feeling yourself relax while speaking to the Gods, touching hands, or even smelling a certain scent from no obvious source.
  6. You hear a response. In some cases you may actually hear a voice in your head when a God speaks to you.
  7. The Gods come through divination, such as automatic writing, scrying, tarot, pendulum or omens. Certain signs or repeated animal sightings may also be a method of contact.
  8. The Gods communicate through dreams, visions, meditation or hedge crossing.

Anything I missed? Please add on. And remember that these are simply examples. Listen to your instinct, and you’ll know. It may take some time.

I wish you a fun and rewarding path, lovelies! .+(´^ω^`)+.

Is it possible to like

sit to commune with the deities with music playing? 

I just canNOT concentrate in the silence and I feel like music brings me closer and puts me in a higher energy spot to like, talk

rosegoldtunic:

Sharing food with your Deities (how I do it)

There are many ways you can offer food to the gods but I never really see this specific method (which I used to use when I was super poor) and honestly, even though I’m doing economically well, I still use this method as a bonding experience with me and the gods/spirits. I thought I’d share it for those of you who might need it.

I grew up super poor and unable to waste food because I was doing witchcraft in secret and my mother would flip or my siblings would eat the food if I left food out. Still, I felt bad because all the witch books I was reading at the time (the 90s) said I had to have a physical altar (I later learned this is such BS because you can mentally have one if you can’t physically aquire or keep one) and that I HAD to put food on it as an offering and later dig it in the Earth when it was done. (Very hard to do if you live in the city and can potentially be bad for the environment).

I was frustrated. I wanted to show the gods and spirits around me that I cared, that I was greatful for their protection and constant blessings. But with me being only able to get what I could from my mom because my mother couldn’t afford to give us an allowance, there was nothing I could do, so I got creative.

I looked at my food and was silent for a bit. My mom was so proud because she assumed I was saying Grace in my head. In actuality, I touched my plate/bowl and imagined gold energy coming out of my finger tips. The gold engulfed the food and I mentally said:

“I offer the spiritual aspect of the food I’m about to eat. I offer it to (say name/names of the gods and spirits. I visualized many copies of this food for all I was offering it to, so they can enjoy the meal I was about to eat.) You are also welcome to eat through me and taste what my tastebuds taste. I will only be consuming the physical portion of this food. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all you do and continue to do. I love you.”

Some spirits would take me on my offer to eat through me and I could feel their energy go inside me while I ate. It was a beautiful experience and one that I still practice for a few reasons:

1) It allowed me to continue working with these gods/spirits in private.

2) I didn’t have to worry about what to do with the physical part of the food because I consumed it.

3) it was economically sound. As someone who was very poor and could only offer what I had, the spirits understood I was doing what I could. A lot of would be witches say they can’t afford the food offerings because they have to buy extra food when their normal grocery bill already looks scary.

4) I could feel the spiritual energy during these offerings. It was like being in a euphoric state of mind and that felt like we were truly bonding. It also helped me be able to identify when my spirits were near and tell them all apart.

When I got older and had a job, I was able to afford buying extra offerings but it wasn’t the same amazing experience. When I was getting rid of the food, I couldn’t help but feel bad for “wasting” it. (Something that was considered a terrible offense in my poor household.) I started to feel more and more disconnected with the spirits and before I knew it, the hectic aspects of life made it hard for me to remember to make extra for my altar so over time I stopped doing it altogether.

I find it easier for me to include the spirits in my daily life than make extra time for them because sometimes life has a way of keeping you away from your spiritual activities when it gets hectic.

Now, I do what I did when I was a kid. I interwove my gods and guides into my daily life and am experiencing magick like never before! I know some people will see this as super obvious but I felt it needed to be said for those who might need to see this.

I hope this helps and remember, no one has a right to say what is right for your craft but you! ❤

edderkopper:

criolize:

okay i feel like i should know this by now but…what does hard polytheism mean?

Hard polytheism means you view each deity as a separate entity. To a hard polytheist, Mars is a different god than Ares or Tyr.

The opposite of this would be soft polytheism. In soft polytheism, all deities are just different faces of the same divine being (or the same divine being.) Examples would be Wiccans who view all gods as aspects of the Horned God, or the Romans, who treated foreign deities as representations of their own gods under different names.

This is, of course, a spectrum. There are people who believe that, e.g., Woden and Odin are the same guy, but Hermes is different despite having been compared to him in the past. There are people whose polytheism is so “hard” that they believe that even deities by the same name might be different local entities (e.g., believing Athena Alea is different from Athena Polias, or that different regions of Ireland have different Cailleachs) and people whose polytheism is so “soft” that they’re basically pantheistic.

These also aren’t historical frameworks, or frameworks used in academia. They’re just useful terms for modern polytheists to compare views.